Her Brave Wolf (Marked By The Moon Book 1)

by Kestra Pingree

  She studied the map for a moment longer. If she went to the southeast entrance to Blue Forest, she’d find Moonwatch. There was a road she could follow in a roundabout way to get there. She traced that road with her finger, visualizing getting there in her yellow Jeep.

  Well, she knew what she was going to do on her day off.

  Gwen jumped when she heard a furious knock on the cabin door. A knock was an unusual occurrence for her, and since the poachers were still out there somewhere, her hand went immediately for her holstered gun. She had her pistol ready as she opened the door. It turned out she didn’t need it. The man who stood there waiting on the other side of the door was her wolf. Her jaw dropped open and the hand holding her gun fell to her side. It was the wolfman who ran away from her bare-ass naked yesterday. He was wearing clothes today, looking perfectly human—except for his inhumanly sexy good looks. No man had the yellow-hazel eye color he had. No man had his strong chin, well-defined even through the dark stubble he wore. No man had a pair of sensual lips that could stop her heart by merely looking at them and thinking about how they’d feel to kiss. And no man had the terrible injuries he had. He had new wounds, blatant, hard to miss even with her infatuated filter. He had bad gashes on his face or maybe a large bite. Another wolf?

  After quickly holstering her gun again, she opened the door wider, but not quite wide enough to let him in. She couldn’t think of anything to say, and he was standing silently in front of her, studying her with those mysterious wolfish eyes. Her heart skipped a beat when she looked into those eyes. She dry swallowed, trying to find control over her tongue so she could say something to the man who quite literally stole her breath away. She wanted to reach out and trace the wounds on his face. He must have gotten them yesterday when he left, but they looked too old for that to be possible. They were healed as if he’d had them for a few weeks already. It was the same as that bullet wound in his stomach. She wondered if he scarred at all, or if his body healed any blemishes.

  The man cleared his throat and averted his gaze. He rested his eyes on some invisible point near her right shoulder.

  “You need to release me from our contract,” he said in a gruff voice.

  “Contract,” Gwen repeated, dumbfounded.

  He held up his left hand, the back of his hand toward her face. She saw the sheen of the odd moon-like shape she had on her right hand. Involuntarily, she lifted her right hand to meet his left. The closer she got to touching him, the more the symbol on the back of her hand seemed to buzz. The pearly off-colored skin was changing too. It was no longer reflecting light, it was producing a light of its own. His was doing the same. He suddenly jerked away from her before she touched him.

  “Just say you don’t hold me to fulfilling my end of the bargain,” the man said hastily. Gwen thought she could see him shaking. “Say the terms of our contract have been satisfied.”

  Scowling, Gwen said, “I never expected anything from you in the first place.”

  The man winced.

  “Come inside,” Gwen said, softening her tone. “We can talk more.”

  She opened the door wide enough to allow him entry. He didn’t say a word as he brushed by her and into the cabin. She felt the slightest touch of his ridiculously muscled arm as he did. Her heart pounded in her chest, but she tried to ignore it as she shut the door behind them.

  The man walked a few feet inside, but that was it. There was a wood framed sofa he could have sat on, but he opted to stand in the middle of the room instead.

  “You can sit down, you know?” Gwen informed.

  He grunted in response.

  Shrugging, she asked, “Do you want ibuprofen or something?” She cocked her head. “Or maybe you should actually go see a doctor. You seem to get hurt a lot.”

  The way his entire body seemed to stiffen made Gwen hold her breath in anticipation for whatever response he would give, but then the tension left his body.

  “No doctor. The ibuprofen I’ll accept,” he said.

  Relief washed over Gwen. Maybe he didn’t feel as cold toward her as he was acting after all. He didn’t seem to think she was going to poison him or anything at least. What did he actually think of her? Last time she saw him, his dick did some talking of its own. He must have found her attractive. Was he scared of her? Surely he knew she was on his side at least. Whatever that meant. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she wanted to help him, just like when she found him bleeding as a wolf in the forest. She would have felt that way for anyone, but there was something about him that was almost familiar. It wasn’t familiar so much as she felt like she could be vulnerable around him—something she would never feel comfortable with around anyone else. She felt no need for pretenses.

  “Ibuprofen it is then,” Gwen agreed as she waltzed to the bathroom. She didn’t know what about this man put her at ease and in such a good mood, but damn did he do it. Her legs felt weak around him, and her core lit up with fire. Looking at him could paralyze her. She wondered if it had something to do with magic like how he could turn into a wolf. Maybe he was using magic to make her feel this way. That sounded dangerous, so why couldn’t she bring herself to care?

  Once she grabbed a couple pills from the cabinet, she returned to the main room of the cabin and held them out to the man whose name she really needed to ask. She hoped he’d at least brush her hand with his, but he simply held his hand out, palm up. Disappointed, she dropped the pills in his palm without touching him. She was about to offer him some water, but he swallowed the pills dry.

  She clasped her hands behind her back to discourage them from moving on their own. Why did she want to reach out and touch him so badly? She wanted to be reminded of just how firm his muscles were, and she wanted to feel his warmth. She thought sex with him would probably be amazing, unlike the last time she had sex. She shook her head. What was she thinking? It was something she couldn’t explain. And it was all crazy. He could shapeshift into a wolf!

  “You get in fights a lot?” Gwen asked. She needed to chill out before she came across as a total creep or something. She never liked guys coming on strong to her in the past—though she would have felt very differently about this one. Maybe he was a guy who wouldn’t have appreciated a woman doing the same to him. How could she know?

  He frowned at her and stayed silent.

  So maybe she shouldn’t have asked that. “Look,” she said, trying to save herself. “You don’t have to be scared of me or anything. I’m not going to tell anyone you can turn into a wolf. I doubt anyone would believe me if I did anyway, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  He growled. Actually growled at her. His lips curled into an aggressive snarl, showing off teeth that looked sharper than any human teeth she’d ever seen. They looked much more like a dog’s. A wolf’s. Especially the canines. The aggressive gesture definitely should have scared her, but it didn’t.

  “I’m not scared.” He spat and folded his arms.

  Gwen grinned. Unlike his growl, her grin put him off balance. He raised an eyebrow at her. God, was he hot. She wanted to put her hands on either side of his face and pull him down for a kiss to see if those lips were as kissable as they looked. Gwen was tall herself, but her wolfman was taller and much broader. Gwen had always prided herself on being fit and muscular in her own right, but she was still a woman. She wondered if him being this large had something to do with him being a wolf. She hadn’t seen many guys his size.

  “Show me your wolf then,” Gwen taunted as she folded her arms to match him.

  He scoffed. “I want you to break this contract. Do that and I’ll show you a wolf.”

  “Okay,” she said nonchalantly. She had no idea what “contract” he was talking about. He showed her the moon on the back of his left hand like it had something to do with this contract he kept going on about. Hell if she knew how to get rid of it, but he seemed to know what he was talking about, so it couldn’t be that hard.

  “So say it,” he reminded, exasperated.
“Say that you don’t hold me to fulfilling my end of the contract and that you release me.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she replied. “I don’t hold you to fulfilling your end of the contract, and I release you. Happy?”

  He held out his hand and looked at the moon mark intently. He stayed like that for a few long seconds before he let his hand fall to his side. He closed the gap between him and Gwen in an instant and grabbed her right hand. She couldn’t hide the little shuddering gasp that escaped her lips. His skin was warm all right, and just him holding her hand was killing her. Her body temperature seemed to turn up fifty degrees. Her underwear was going to be soaked at this rate. Her wolfman's eyes seemed to dilate in response to her own reaction, and it made her burn hotter. She was fairly certain her cheeks were literally on fire in this moment. Her lips were trembling, and her eyelashes were fluttering. She was so caught up in this stupor, she didn’t notice when the man’s attention was on her hand and he was no longer looking into her eyes.

  When he brought her hand up to her face, she felt slightly coherent again. He was showing her the back of her hand where the moon mark was apparent. It wasn’t glowing or anything weird like what she was sure she saw before. It was the same pearly skin she was growing accustomed to.

  “You have to mean it,” he said, but his words came out ragged like he had just been running a marathon. Gwen couldn’t read minds and she wasn’t an empath or anything, but it looked to her like she had the same effect on him that he had on her: a nearly crippling attraction.

  “I do mean it,” she replied, her voice shaking with anticipation.

  He didn’t let go of her hand, but his eyes drifted back up to meet hers. No one had ever looked at her with such an obvious hunger. If it had been anyone else, she was sure it would have unnerved her. But with him, she loved it.

  She brought her left hand to his face, gingerly feeling out the old gashes. They looked like they hurt, but it amazed her how quickly he healed. He must have felt pain, but she wondered if it was less pain than what a normal human felt when they got hurt. She knew the pain lasted longer for humans at least. They simply didn’t heal this fast.

  His breathing was deep and shallow at the same time. His grip on her right hand grew tighter, but he allowed her to continue tracing his face. But only for a moment. Then he withdrew from her in a flash. One minute she was touching him, and the next there was several feet worth of space between them. Maybe she had just imagined that whole moment, but the look on his face told her it must have been real.

  He cleared his throat and went back to looking at that space above her right shoulder. “If you can’t release our contract, then we have nothing more to talk about.”

  Gwen’s heart nearly broke when he turned his back to her and headed straight for the door.

  “Wait!” she shouted. Then she lowered her voice, trying to sound less like a crazy person. “At least tell me what your name is.”

  He stopped, but he didn’t turn around to face her. “There’s no reason for you to know my name,” he said.

  Her heart cracked a little more. “Then be careful out there,” she said, holding an even tone so he wouldn’t know what his words did to her because they didn’t make any sense. “We haven’t caught those poachers yet. It’s possible they’ve left and won’t come back, but my experience with poachers makes that seem unlikely.”

  “Your concern is pointless.” His words were a dagger in her heart, shattering it.

  She anticipated him running out the door and moved. She knew how fast he was, and she needed to act quickly. She ran forward and grabbed his arm right when he was about to escape. She held on as tightly as she could, doing her best to make sure he wouldn’t be able to shake her off and run.

  “What about the mark?” she asked, pressing her cheek into his warm and muscled arm, just below his shoulder. She felt more of his body in that moment than she ever had before, but she couldn’t enjoy it because she was trying to stop him from leaving. Her right hand was burning fiercely, agitating her more. “What does it mean? And what is all this contract shit about?”

  She felt his hand flex into a fist as the action rippled up his arm. Gwen braced herself and clung to him. When he tried to pry her off of him, she just grabbed him again, and since she was stuck to one arm, he only had one arm to work with.

  “Goddamn stubborn ranger,” her wolfman growled.

  He quit playing her game and buying into her stubbornness as he wrapped his free arm around her waist and hoisted her off her feet. He pressed her against his hard chest as he pulled her away from the arm she wouldn’t quit clinging from. Gwen didn’t know how strong he was before, but she realized at this moment that he was very strong. He could have ripped her off him effortlessly and left her hurting on the ground, but he didn’t. He was being extremely careful with her. Her right hand wasn’t burning anymore. That was when she let go. Her wolfman set her back on her feet, and she reluctantly stepped away from him and the door.

  At first, he didn’t move. He eyed her like he was expecting her to stand in his way again.

  “Are you going to come back?” Gwen asked, lowering her head. She felt kind of ashamed of how she was acting. Like a petulant child.

  “No,” he said simply. “You’ll never see me again.”

  Her heart shattered into particle sized pieces.

  When she lifted her head again, he was gone, and the door was closed. Did he change into a wolf?

  She went to the door and opened it part way. She caught sight of her wolfman disappearing into the forest, growing darker by the moment. He was walking with his hands in his pockets. Instead of standing straight and showing off his broad shoulders, he was hunched over somewhat. Was he going to walk all the way back to Moonwatch as a human? It was possible he drove. Her cabin was deep inside of Blue Forest, but there was a road much closer to her cabin than cutting through the forest to get to Moonwatch. That road was the direction he was heading.

  He said she would never see him again, but she had different plans in mind. She was a free woman, and she was going to check out Moonwatch tomorrow. She had the day off so it was the perfect opportunity. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if she found her wolfman there. In fact, she was counting on it. Maybe things would be different tomorrow when they both had time to cool their heads. She hoped so. Or else she would have to pick up the pieces of a broken heart that shouldn’t have been broken.

  CHAPTER 7

  NICK FELT LIKE HE was driving drunk. His entire body was numb with the feeling of Gwen touching him. Her arousal set his nose on fire, and the way she looked at him was imprinted on his mind. He was surprised when she actually let go of him after giving his arm a full-on death grip before like she had no plans on ever letting him go. She was like a fucking boa constrictor—in more ways than one. God, did he hate to admit he liked it. She was a fierce woman. He didn’t know her well, but that much was apparent.

  Alpha material.

  He shook his head and swerved on the only road that led to Moonwatch. Good thing this road wasn’t well-traveled. He’d be endangering someone besides himself if that was the case, and if a cop spotted him right now, he was certain he’d get pulled over for drunk driving. He was drunk all right. Just not on alcohol.

  He slammed his fist on his Silverado’s dashboard in response to the damn mark on his left hand making every inch of his skin crawl. He didn’t know what the Moon was trying to tell him by making the Lunas Sigil physically react to things all of the time—mostly the woman, Gwen. The sensation he was feeling in his hand when she was clinging to him was an uncomfortable heat, but it wasn’t painful. It was more like an immense energy, and if Gwen hadn’t let him go when she did, and especially if she had grabbed him again, he would have fucking kissed her or something. She made his brain short-circuit. Nothing made sense when he was around her.

  Reminding himself to take in deep breaths, he worked on calming his nerves and settled back into his seat. The scenery around him was not
hing but Blue Forest in the distance to his left and open land with mountains in the distance to his right. It didn’t do much to distract him from the thoughts he wished he could turn off.

  It was a strange feeling. This attraction. Nick had never felt this way about anyone which wasn’t necessarily strange when considering his upbringing, but feeling it now was overwhelming. And for a human. The worst part was that there was apparently nothing he could do about it. The sigil would stay on his hand, and he’d either save that woman’s life someday or the sigil would stay there forever based on the conclusion he and Julie had come to.

  What was an Alpha to do? Wasn’t he supposed to have all the answers? When he was a pup, he thought Alpha’s had all the answers. His father always seemed to. He never worried about taking his father’s place because he believed his father was invincible. He always seemed invincible. It had only been a month since he and Nick’s mother died. Sometimes Nick would wake up in the morning thinking all he had been doing as Alpha was nothing more than a bad dream, but he was never fortunate enough to wake up from that dream.

  He tried to base the decisions he made as Alpha on what his father would have done. He had done a fantastic job of that so far. Yep, he didn’t know the first thing about running a pack. He almost wished he could pass the burden off to his Beta, but that would only make things worse. The pack was counting on him, and his Beta was no Alpha.

  And now Nick had the Storm Pack to worry about. Yeah, he put Howard in charge, but Nick would have to make special trips to Eastbrook regularly to keep things in order, and every Full Moon those wolves would have to travel to Moonwatch to renew Pack Vows.

  God, he was stressed.

  It took an hour or so for him to get back to Moonwatch. By the time he got back, all traces of the sun were gone and night had settled in.

  As he parked his truck in front of the Alpha Den, he was silently grateful for how spread out Moonwatch was. Likely no one besides Julie even knew he had gone. Things were mostly quiet in Moonwatch, so it was rare Nick was really needed for anything immediate. That and his Beta took care of most things. Nick didn’t complain. It made being Alpha almost bearable. Almost.